Fallout ‘76

Bethesda did their E3 announcement last night and I have to say I’m excited.

The new Fallout sounds a lot like GTA V as in there is a single player mode along with a new multiplayer mode/co-op mode. I personally think it sounds like a lot of fun, but a lot of Fallout faithful are not happy about the multiplayer aspect of the game.

For the Multiplayer yes, they said that there would only be a dozen or so people in multiplayer. There will still be a solo play mode, so that’s why I imagine it will be like GTA, you have a solo mode and then servers for online.

They said "always online". You can play "solo". No confirmation of actual single player. More like how you can play Elder Scrolls online "solo" our world of Warcraft "solo", from what I saw I the videos and the wording they used, which means not alone.

And for now at least, the beta is tied to preorders.

I really want to be excited, but I don't like being forced to play with others. I don't like PVP, especially not in role-playing games. I love the idea of playing in West Virginia with the local folk lore and nuclear missiles available.

This is not going to be a day one purchase for me, and that actually bums me out. At least there will be plenty of streams and videos to watch around launch to decide if it's worth it.

Plus the whole "every human you see is a real person" really scares me about handling quests and a lack of NPCs.

They said "always online". You can play "solo". No confirmation of actual single player. More like how you can play Elder Scrolls online "solo" our world of Warcraft "solo", from what I saw I the videos and the wording they used, which means not alone.

And for now at least, the beta is tied to preorders.

I really want to be excited, but I don't like being forced to play with others. I don't like PVP, especially not in role-playing games. I love the idea of playing in West Virginia with the local folk lore and nuclear missiles available.

This is not going to be a day one purchase for me, and that actually bums me out. At least there will be plenty of streams and videos to watch around launch to decide if it's worth it.

Plus the whole "every human you see is a real person" really scares me about handling quests and a lack of NPCs.

If you want to do a deep dive. I'm excited. I like Destiny. I thought it was a interesting idea that was a great mid-point between truly solo play and forced joint play in traditional MMOs. 4x map size is sweet too. As long as I can play in a non-PVP server, I will be happy.

It's real-time," Howard said. "It doesn't slow time. But it lets you target and pick parts and all of that, but it's in real-time. It still works great. It's different, obviously, because it's real-time, but the basics of it, which are, 'I can't really—I'm not that good of a twitch shooter' … You can kind of picture how it works. Like, I'm not as good as lining up someone and getting a head shot, but I've made my character good at VATS, and now I can do that."

I can kind of picture how it might work, I suppose, and I give full credit to Bethesda for coming up with VATS in the first place, an elegant translation of OG Fallout-style combat to the first-person perspective of Fallout 3 and beyond. That gives me hope that it can work in a multiplayer setting, too. But I also have to wonder if it might not wash so well in a PvP environment, where players sometimes don't react particularly well to being taken down by someone they perceive to be a less-skilled player.

Howard addressed that concern to an extent, saying that Bethesda is working to ensure that the online-only game world doesn't become a haven for jerks. "We don't want it to be griefy, but we want to have some drama there," he said.

"There is a way that you can decide to do PvP, and we're currently balancing the incentives for someone who wants to be very aggressive to people, and those who want to ignore it. That really comes down to the end-game incentives, and also the social incentives. But we don't want it to be griefy in any way, and we'll dial it in so that people can say, 'Look, I don't want to deal with that'."

That doesn't mean you can choose to completely remove yourself from the dangers of the Wasteland, however, as Howard made clear in his hesitant response when asked if players can opt out of PvP entirely. "We want a little bit of drama there, without them ruining your game," he said.

The above is from an interview with Todd Howard. Started as a discussion of "real time VATS", which sounds kind of cool, but those last few bits about PVP are very disconcerting. Sounds like no lone wandering, which is going to make it a hard pass for me.

There will be private servers (ie solo play if you don't open the server to anyone) available after launch. I am willing to bet it will be before spring at the latest but likely within two months of launch. If I had to guess, they are forcing people onto the public servers at launch to make you get the user experience they designed but at least they aren't forcing that on us forever.